Joan Crawford

When I first discovered The Dead Celebrity Cookbook it was a near hit at the back of Entertainment Weekly’s The Bullseye feature. Frank Decaro, best know for being the movie critic on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, drew inspiration for the book from a college party in the 80’s. All of Decaro’s friends dressed as a dead celebrity, but the party had a fatal flaw — it lacked food. So, over the years Decaro collected a mass of cookbooks, magazines and other sources of recipes from celebrities who are now dead. If you can get past the morbidity of the book it really is a great collection of recipes, with no particular rhyme or reason other than they’re each supposedly a favorite of a deceased famous person. Who’d have thought Johnny Casrson cooked? Whitefish, no less.

If you can convince yourself that these people actually cooked, let alone had a favorite recipe worth keeping note of, then it’s worth having as an addition to your collection of cookbooks. Plus, most the recipes are pretty basic. Dean Martin’s burgers and bourbon consists of three ingredients — beef, salt and bourbon — at least he seasoned (what, you’re expecting molecular gastronomy?) My favorite chapter is chapter 25, Thank You for Feeding a Friend, which includes Bea Arthur’s veggie breakfast and Rue McClanahan’s non-dairy cheesecake, among other Golden Girls goodies. And to get your started, here’s one fabulous recipe from the DCD.